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CBS News
6 minutes ago
- CBS News
Santa Rosa City Schools wants officers back on campus but faces funding issues
With students returning to school in just a couple of weeks, some in Santa Rosa may be expecting to see the return of school resource officers to their campuses. It's been five years since Santa Rosa Schools got rid of their on-campus officers, but then, a series of violent events, including one death, caused the district to have a change of heart. Now, even though there appears to be the will to bring the officers back, financially speaking, there doesn't seem to be a way to do it. When students return to Montgomery High, it may feel like business as usual when it comes to safety. But in her 'welcome back' message to the public, Superintendent Lisa August delivered the good news. "In partnership with the city of Santa Rosa," she said, "we're grateful for the recent unanimous vote by the City Council, supporting a new memorandum of understanding to bring School Resource Officers back to our campuses." But what's missing from that understanding was any way to pay for it. The program was supposed to train five school resource officers, or SROs, to be assigned to the city's high schools. It came after violent incidents in the schools culminated with the stabbing death of 16-year-old Jayden Pienta at Montgomery High. Heather Gruenbaum is a district parent and member of a group called the Safe Campus Alliance, which was formed after Jayden's killing to push for SROs in the schools. "This was a program that was in place since 1996," said Gruenbaum. "It had been a long-term, successful program. We hadn't had as much violence. The violence since 2020, since the kids came back to school in 2021, has just skyrocketed in our school district. And that's not OK." The SRO program ended in 2020 when some school board members objected to having law enforcement of any kind on campus for social equity reasons. "I think the district finally had a situation where their board was prioritizing a more broad-range view, rather than an activist situation," said Gruenbaum, about the change of position. "The school district needs to advocate for the ENTIRE student body, the maximum amount of people that it's going to be helping." But the district has such a budget problem now that it is going to start sending 7th and 8th graders to the high schools. At the same time, the city says it also has a huge deficit and can't afford to pay the estimated annual $1.7 million for officers for the schools. "In this last budget cycle, we experienced more than $3 million in cuts of our own," said Sgt Patricia Seffens, SRPD's public information officer. "And that's before we even had this program in place. We lost 15 staff positions due to this budget cut." And Seffens said it may be a while until the police department can help supply the schools with SROs. "We're looking at, you know, five years or longer before all of that gets resolved," she said. "It is really disheartening to hear that, for five years? That's not right," said Gruenbaum. "We need to move this forward. We need to make sure that this is a priority. Why? Just why? It's not really that much money. I think that they can handle this." In June, overall, the city of Santa Rosa approved more than $11 million in cuts as part of the 2025-26 budget. They still reportedly face a long-term deficit of $45 million. And they are ineligible to apply for federal grants because of the city's policy to not cooperate with ICE. But Gruenbaum says other, smaller communities in the county seem to be able to afford an SRO program and she feels that the money would be there if the district hadn't ended the program back in 2020. As a result, it's now being viewed as a new expense that neither the city or the schools can afford. "What does it take?" she said. "We've already had a horrible death in our district. What else is it going to take?"
CBS News
6 minutes ago
- CBS News
Victorville man sought for attempted murder after throwing incendiary devices into home
A Victorville man is being sought for attempted murder on Monday after he allegedly threw multiple incendiary devices into a home. Deputies were called to the 14000 block of Montecito Place at around 2:20 a.m. after learning of a possible arson in the area, according to a news release from the San Bernardino Police Departmnet/Victorville Police Department. "Through investigation, deputies learned Raymond Woods stood outside one of the residence bedroom windows. Woods made threats before throwing multiple improvised incendiary devices through several of the residence windows," the release said. All six occupants of the home were able to evacuate without injury, while Woods fled from the area at the same time. Woods, 47, has not been located since. Investigators say that the incident was not random and that Woods knew the people inside the home. Anyone who knows more is asked to contact VPD at (760) 241-2911 or SBSD at (760) 956-5001.
New York Times
6 minutes ago
- New York Times
Marjorie Taylor Greene Asks for George Santos's Sentence to Be Commuted
George Santos, the disgraced former congressman and notorious fabulist who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft after being expelled from the House, has been in federal prison for 11 days on a sentence of more than seven years. On Monday, one of his former colleagues began a formal effort to get him out. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the brash Georgia Republican and MAGA adherent, sent a letter to the Justice Department's pardon attorney asking that Mr. Santos's 87-month prison term be commuted, calling it 'excessive' and a 'grave injustice.' Ms. Greene's letter came just days after President Trump, who has doled out pardons or clemency to staunch supporters and others favored by his right-wing base, did not rule out offering a pardon to Mr. Santos, saying only that he had not been asked. 'Nobody's talked to me about it,' Mr. Trump said on Friday in an interview on the right-wing channel Newsmax. Still, the president, who is known for his own exaggerations and outright falsehoods, acknowledged Mr. Santos's reputation. 'He lied like hell,' Mr. Trump said. 'And I didn't know him, but he was 100 percent for Trump.' It was an accurate assessment. Mr. Santos, 37, rode into Congress in January 2023 as the object of national scorn after The New York Times and other outlets uncovered that he had fabricated much of his résumé, including a booming Wall Street career and ties to Sept. 11 and the Holocaust. He was ejected that December, after three-quarters of the House voted to expel him. But during his 11-month stint in Congress, Mr. Santos, a Republican from New York, frequently aligned with hard-right lawmakers like Ms. Greene. And even before he took office, Mr. Santos was a reliable Trump loyalist. After both men lost their elections in 2020, Mr. Santos repeated the president's debunked claims of election fraud and falsely insisted that he, too, had an election stolen from him. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
